Word
Leijuimme ylösalaisin, ikään kuin painajainen jatkuisi.
Meaning
We floated upside down, as if the nightmare were continuing.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Leijuimme ylösalaisin, ikään kuin painajainen jatkuisi.
jatkua
to continue
ikään kuin
as if / as though
painajainen
nightmare
ylösalaisin
upside down
Questions & Answers about Leijuimme ylösalaisin, ikään kuin painajainen jatkuisi.
Why is the conditional form jatkuisi used here instead of a regular past tense?
The conjunction ikään kuin (as if) sets up a hypothetical situation. Even though the main action (leijuimme) happened in the past, the "nightmare continuing" is an imaginary comparison. In Finnish, you use the conditional marker -isi- after ikään kuin to show this is an unreal or hypothetical scenario.
Could I use jatkaisi (from jatkaa) instead of jatkuisi here?
No. Jatkaa is a transitive verb, meaning someone continues something (e.g., "I continue the story"). Jatkua is an intransitive verb, meaning something continues by itself (e.g., "The nightmare continues"). Since the nightmare (painajainen) is the subject acting on its own, you must use the intransitive jatkuisi.
Since we floated in the past (leijuimme), why isn't the conditional verb in the past conditional (olisi jatkunut)?
When you use ikään kuin, the present conditional (jatkuisi) shows that the hypothetical action is happening at the same time as the main verb. Because the floating and the nightmare are simultaneous, you use the present conditional. If you used the past conditional (olisi jatkunut), it would mean "as if the nightmare had continued" before the floating even started.
How exactly does the word (upside down) break down?